Ally Sheedy Inches Away from "Hedwig"

Depending on who you ask, ex-Brat Packer Ally Sheedy is either wacky, tired or a poor calendar-reader.

What's certain is this: Sheedy, the first female star of the acclaimed rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has left the off-Broadway show with nearly two months left on her contract.

Reps for the show say the move is "due to exhaustion and a great desire to spend the holidays with her family." Since Sheedy originally signed a deal that would keep her in the show through February 4 (i.e., through "the holidays"), it's unclear how stuff like, oh, New Year's Eve snuck up on the actress. But whatever. Producers, at least, are taking the high road.

"We lift our hands to the departing Ally Sheedy," a statement from the show says magnanimously.

The New York Post, meanwhile, is dishing dirt.

The paper's theater critic Michael Riedel reports the 37-year-old Sheedy left in a huff Wednesday after producers complained about her increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior.

Sources tell the paper that show execs were fed up with the actress dropping songs and ad-libbing so much that audiences couldn't follow the show.

In Hedwig, Sheedy played a man disfigured in a botched sex-change operation. She debuted in the long-running show in October. From the start, her run has been rocky. Reviews were mixed, her attendance was shoddy, and her attitude was, um, different.

"I feel like I'm going out of my mind," Sheedy told the The New York Times in September. "I don't know whose idea this was. I can't dance, can't sing, and I can't act. I'm waiting for them to fire me."

Finally this week, producers reportedly suggested Sheedy end her run in January.

"When they told her that, she just quit," a source tells the Post.

Calls to Sheedy's spokesperson have not yet been returned.

Among the temperamental star's reputed foibles: Sheedy forced an actress who plays a mute character to sing one of her songs. Sheedy refused to do the scene unless the aforementioned actress kissed her on stage. "She was completely out there," a crew member says in the Post. "She wasn't sticking to the script, and she was doing all sorts of weird stuff on stage."

Sheedy's understudy, singer-model Donovan Leitch, is also currently absent from Hedwig. Reps say he's on leave to record an album. The title role is currently being played by actor Kevin Cahoon, a former Hedwig understudy and alum of Broadway's The Who's Tommy and The Lion King.

The Hedwig camp says Sheedy's long-term replacement will be announced shortly.

In related news, the Los Angeles production of Hedwig is scheduled to close Sunday, ending a failed two-month run that's leaving a flood of red ink, not to mention bad blood.

Producers likely will lose their $600,000-plus investment. Slow ticket sales are to blame, although backers think theater-shy Angelenos are the real bad guys.

"The city didn't rise to the occasion," coproducer Joan Stein told The Los Angeles Times. "We could have existed filling only 50 percent of the seats at each performance."